Lois Lane: Enemy of the People

Believe it or not, this is a sister title to “Superman’s Pal:  Jimmy Olsen.”  This is due to the fact that both maxi-series were launched out of the “Leviathan Rising” one-shot, even if they couldn’t be more different in their style, tone, and use of Superman.  However, the biggest difference between them is that where “Superman’s Pal” is unmitigated frivolity that’s almost entirely removed from reality, “Lois Lane” has writer Greg Rucka and artist Mike Perkins writing a lot about our world through the lens of a superhero comic.  Which is why the first issue has Lois exposing a major bribery scandal involving the White House at one of its press briefings and subsequently getting ejected from it along with her press credentials being revoked.  Subsequent issues deal with Russian espionage, corporations taking the law into their own hands, and illegal immigration.

All of these are background elements to Rucka’s portrait of DC’s foremost journalist and her family life.  Which he depicts quite well with her dogged persistence to get at the truth and interactions with her husband and son.  In fact, her encounters with Superman and Clark Kent may be the most straightforwardly enjoyable part of this volume as the writer clearly gets what makes these two work together so well as a couple as we see their bickering and loving sides regularly over the course of this volume.  Perkins does a good job depicting this as well, with his shadowy, noirish art being a good look for a story that goes poking around in the underbelly of the DCU.

Where the story loses me a bit is when Rucka starts indulging some of his DC fanboyism.  You’d think he’d be above that, but this is a guy whose return to “Wonder Woman” saw him undo everything that had been done to the character since her relaunch.  So we get things like Renee Montoya meeting up with Vic Sage again, the return of the Religion of Crime, and a whole bunch of exposition as to why some people remember major relaunches and others don’t.  I’d much rather see Lois focus on something like busting Lexcorp wide open (which doesn’t happen here), even if the writer does his best to try and find some relatable emotions to ground this high-concept stuff.  It all leads to a collection that I found to be enjoyable, if not quite as good as I was expecting from the creative team.